Aug 24, 2008

Eclipse Mylyn connector for ScrumWorks

Hi, My name is Gorkem and I am a Mylyn addict. Mylyn makes it so convenient to work with my tasks, switching between them etc. However, I was trying to quit lately.
I use ScrumWorks for my daily work and a Mylyn connector ( plugin(s) that enable Mylyn to retrieve/update data ) to ScrumWorks did not exist. This meant, I had to do a lot of copying and pasting between two tools. Obviously, this manual synchronization effort was futile and I had to give up on one. Since, It is not possible to give up on ScrumWorks, I decided to put Mylyn aside. I tried for a week or so but once you get used to the stuff it is hard to quit.
On a moment of desperation, I thought, I have some experience with developing Eclipse stuff that connects to servers. If I get enough cappuccinos to my system, I can develop a ScrumWorks connector for myself. It turns out I was right, after giving some part of my night’s sleep, I have it. My Mylyn connector that allows me to retrieve and update backlog Items and tasks. I can also add tasks to backlog items and of course it works in great harmony with the rest of Mylyn.

I am impressed by the way Mylyn handles the UI for a connector. Once you get the data mapping right the UI almost does itself. Unfortunately, this can be a challenge since Mylyn lacks API and extension point documentation. There could be more extension points but it looked like Mylyn team is already aware of it. On the positive side the code follows well known patterns so after some code reading, I was able to figure them out.